IF the opening day of the teachers' conferences was unusual for an atmosphere of relative sweetness and light, yesterday's proceedings were marked by anger, frustration and even - when it came to a discussion of school inspection - fear.
At the ASTI conference in Galway, the strong flavour of a lengthy debate on the Education Bill was angry teacher alienation. Speaker after speaker lined up to attack the proposed education boards, the "paper chase" of complex new appeals procedures and school plans, and the new powers to be to inspectors.
Delegates complained bitterly that they had been diminished and marginalised by the Bill's absence of any recognition of the teaching profession.
They were "patronised" by the Minister for Education telling them on Tuesday that the Bill made provision for them to be consulted, when they knew it gave them no decision making powers. They were "insulted" by her claim that setting up 10 regional education boards would cost nothing extra.
They said the Bill's drafters, who had given 16 year olds the right to appeal against any decision which would "materially affect" their education, were "totally out of touch with reality."
It was all a far cry from the previous day, when the Professor of Education at UCC, Dr Aine Hyland, had paid tribute to Breathnach's effectiveness in "holding the fort" on behalf of education at a time of demographic decline and a reduction in education spending in many other OECD countries. It would be "churlish" not to recognise the educational achievements of this Minister and Government, she said.
The churlishness was thick on the ground yesterday. The happiest man in the conference hall must have been Fianna Fail's education spokesman, Mr Micheal Martin, who predicted the Education Bill would not make it through the Oireachtas before a general election.
He warned the Minister against trying to force it through by guillotining debate on it, pointing to the "sense of alienation" among teachers shown at the ASTI conference.
He promised an incoming Fianna Fail government would go "back to the drawing board" and "dramatically alter" the Bill, scrapping the education boards.
At the Teachers' Union of Ireland conference in Ennis, Ms Breathnach was experiencing, more teacher alienation. There the delegates would not let her into the hall at first, because she was seen as being behind the casualisation and poor part time working conditions of so many TUI teachers, the subject they were debating. When she eventually spoke, she received a very cool reception.
In response, TUI president Ms Alice Prendergast listed the Minister's "errors of omission". It was a long litany, including the lack of proposals for in service subsistence payments of a circular on the conditions of appointment of VEC teachers; of the promised Further Education Authority, and the lack of accountability from the Department of Education in general.
In Killarney, they had a quieter day after the "love in" between, the Minister and INTO general secretary, Senator Joe O'Toole, on Tuesday. Delegates voted to take industrial action if the Employment Equality Bill became, law and if Section 37 of that legislation was then used to discriminate against any primary teacher deemed to be undermining school's religious ethos.